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Help InSTEDD Deliver Breakthrough Technology for Social Good.

Over the past decade the world has witnessed incredible advances in technology. From the rise of smartphones and tablets, to the development of driverless cars and flying drones , our ability to communicate, share information, and learn has progressed exponentially. However, the benefits from technology breakthroughs do not reach all communities on the planet equally. InSTEDD needs your support to capitalize on unfunded innovation opportunities for breakthrough uses of technology. Our implementation partners on the ground are excited to realize the use of new and emerging technology, and with your help we can extend the benefits of our 21st century’s technological advances to citizens in communities with urgent needs.

Stopping outbreaks with digital innovations is a promising breakthrough technology area that we continue to observe in our project funded work. Diseases don’t care about borders or walls. With increasing global travel and interconnectedness, a virus outbreak in a hot zone region can spread faster than ever before. To do our part in preventing outbreaks and slowing disease spread in vulnerable communities, we work on projects improving health information systems. For example, in the hot zone of Cambodia we are working with the CDC to replace slow and error-prone paper based reporting of disease with mobile and digital reporting,

We have been working on urgent public health projects since our inception. It was Dr. Larry Brilliant’s TED talk on stopping pandemics that inspired the launch of InSTEDD a decade ago, and we still work worldwide with communities and governments to implement new ways to track and report on disease from the frontlines. In our efforts, we come across innovation opportunities to advance open source technology to meet the needs of front line disease defenders.

Breakthrough Technology Area: Advanced Open Source Technology Tools

For example, in Kenya we are working with Concern Worldwide to develop ‘PlanWise’, an open-source tool that analyzes data to predict and plan coverage towards increasing access to life saving critical health care. However, the development of breakthrough technology deployments like PlanWise often fall outside of our project funded work, and they can become difficult to advance, and are unfortunately delayed, or even cancelled.

Still, InSTEDD is pushing forward to pursue innovations in health and across other issue areas such as agriculture and disaster resilience. Donations and unrestricted funding allows InSTEDD to progress key human-centered design processes that move us forward on long-term sustainable uses of breakthrough technology. And as we look ahead to the next 50 years, InSTEDD imagines if we do it right, technologies that were once only seen in science fiction movies will offer help to millions of people.

Emerging technologies like flying drones, 3D printers, and automated sensors have the potential to give humanitarians new tools in the fight against emergencies, disease and disasters. To appropriately design, develop and deploy these amazing new technologies requires careful research, development, piloting and extensive co-creation and collaboration with community, government and humanitarian agencies. Donations to InSTEDD gives us the time and support needed to mobilize and convene the tech, humanitarian and policy players needed to produce breakthrough technology use cases where people need it the most.

InSTEDD is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public benefit corporation registered in California. Established as an international technology non-profit, receiving public charity designation in 2007. For US taxpayers, this is a tax-deductible donation.